Tuesday, 17 September 2013

These are old photographs that have been sitting on my camera for over a year now. My Chinese cardiologist didn't appear concerned about the shooting pains in arm, so on the spot I had decided to quit my job and go on a relaxing vacation before the stress of cleaning out an apartment and flying back to New Zealand.

One of the places I went was Beijing, and this food blog provided me with a good restaurant recommendation, in this post. I pretty much ordered the same things she did.

The restaurant, Qin Tang Fu, was thankfully within walking distance of my hotel. I would note that you should book hotel rooms online, as even though I bartered for a lower hotel room price, Motel 8 (I think that was it) had lower prices through online ordering. It wasn't as cheap as the Xi'an hotel, but then again it also didn't have the midnight call where you were asked if you wanted a hooker sent up to your room.

The menu was basically a book of pictures, and a laminated sheet with a marker. You'd mark the name of the dishes you wanted, and then give it to the waiter or waitress.

The table had this mystery bowl on it. I wasn't sure what it was, whether it was to drink, or to wash my hands in. I waited a while until another table of young lads sat down, and saw one of them drinking, so I guess it is probably tea. It tasted like floury water anyway.

Here's an inside shot of the restaurant.

It gets tiring looking at food, here's another inside shot.

I ordered the roujiamo (肉夹馍), which looks like a tastier version of a McDonald's McMuffin in retrospect.

Following the McMuffin, was the cold buckwheat noodles. These were also pretty good.

Then having visited Xi'an where I had previously enjoyed it, I bought sticky date pudding. The version I ate in Xi'an was so much nicer. This had obviously been pre-made and reheated.

And given the low quality, it didn't doggy bag well.

Here's the receipt. At 36 RMB, and around 4 RMB to the $1 NZ, that was around $9 NZ. Not bad at all.